Fodor's may use your email address to send you relevant information on site updates, account changes, and offers. For more information about your privacy and protection, please review our full Privacy Policy.

How Many Miles Do You Need for That Free Flight?

by Justin Bachman - Amid strong travel demand, Delta and Southwest are now pricing loyalty awards more like all other tickets—“dynamically,” with regular changes in how many miles it takes to buy an award seat. It looks like United is next.

We had an AMEX/Delta card for more than 10 years and used FF for a number of trips including Turkey and Spain. Last year Delta doubled the required amount for a round trip to The Netherlands. We now have another card that we can use for travel to use as we see fit. We liked AMEX, but the Delta association killed it.

BA can actually be quite wonderful if you fly off season and book way in advance or at the last minute. I recently snagged 1 business (50,000 avios + $135) and 1 first (70,000 avios + $135) to Hong Kong from LAX in March. Also LAX-CDG and CDG-JFK business, also in March, both for about 50k avios and under $100, both booked less than a month before travel.

We also have gotten some amazing business deals to India, SE Asia and Africa using partner airlines with miles on AA. The secret with them is to book an inconvenient itinerary in your desired class and then change closer to the date of travel.

Flyertalk and the Points Guy are my gurus for using miles - excellent tips on both, especially about which CCs to get.

I don't get why you think this is unusual or new. As far as I know, this has been going on forever. Southwest has always had different requirements based on the popularity of the location, date, sales, etc. Same as if you were buying a ticket, basically, and it changes as the date gets closer, just like the cheapest tickets would be sold out. Delta has also been doing that for years, the miles for more desirable routes/nonstops is always more than circuitous, undesirable flights.

Meant to say we used my BA avios for LAX-HKG flights on Cathay (arguably the best airline from the west coast to Asia), thus the lower fuel costs. And we had received 100k free avios each for each getting a BA CC.

Christina, SW devalued its award levels on April 17th. They let customers know very apologetically and there was a mad rush to book award travel because their awards are still completely changeable.

Delta was losing loyal customers because its program is not user friendly, but lately has made minor improvements. Unlike BA and AA, I always try to use SW and Delta miles for domestic tickets as soon as I accumulate miles/points.